余
surname · Han script
Meaning: from ancestor name 由余; descendants took 余 as surname
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/tʰu³⁵/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
余 is a surname written in the Han script, most frequently recorded in China.
- CNChina
- TWTaiwan
- HKHong Kong
Where the name is found, darker where our sources hold more of it. No national register counts its bearers anywhere we hold data, so the map carries no figures. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from ancestor name 由余; descendants took 余 as surname
Sources 1
- 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Recorded in:
No national register we accept counts this name’s bearers, so the page lists where it is found and publishes no figure.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
余 is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Chinese, said to be simplified from 余丘/蛇丘 surname
as a name新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames)
In Chinese, extra; surplus; remaining; remainder after division; (following numerical value) or more; in excess of (some number)
as a wordMDBG Chinese Dictionary (CC-CEDICT) — surname sense
In Chinese, 1sg., prob. a polite form
as a wordBaxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstruction, version 1.1 (2014)
In Japanese, Japanese name element; also read yo, yu
as a name日本人姓名汉字读音辞典
In Chinese, Origin uncertain
as a name中国姓氏大辞典 (Chinese Surnames Mega-Dictionary)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 8 sources across 3 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ChineseNames: household-registered population — surnames + given names (no time axis) | — | 5.7M | #42 |
| TW Taiwan | 全國姓名統計分析 — National Name Statistical Analysis | 2023 | 119K | #41 |
| TW Taiwan | RIS/MOI — Household Registration Statistics (surnames + given names) | 2023 | 119K | #41 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — NameStatistic surname sweep (2025 register lookup) | — | 8.5K | #25 |
| MO Macao | DSEC Macau — Name Statistics (百家姓 surnames + common given names) | — | — | #25 |
| CN China | MPS — 全国姓名报告 surname frequency (百家姓 top-101) | 2021 | — | #40 |
Reference works 1
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name 余 mean, and where does it come from?
- from ancestor name 由余; descendants took 余 as surname Recorded by 新华姓氏词典 (Xinhua dictionary of Chinese surnames).
- How do you pronounce 余?
- A machine transcription gives /tʰu³⁵/ (IPA) for Chinese.
- In which country does 余 have the most bearers?
- 余 is most frequently recorded in China.
What do you want to know about 余?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%E4%BD%99The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “余”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.